TikTok Challenges U.S. Ban In DC Court, Says It’s Unconstitutional

TikTok and its parent company have filed a legal challenge against the US over a law that President Biden signed last month outlawing the app nationwide unless it finds a buyer within a year, Bonny Allyn reported for National Public Radio (NPR).

If TikTok loses this legal fight, experts speculate that it will likely shut down in the US. I Photo: TikTok

In the petition filed in the Court of Appeals (CA) for the District of Columbia Circuit, the company said the legislation exceeds the bounds of the constitution and suppresses the speech of millions of Americans.

"Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional, in fact, that even the Act's sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok's ownership," according to the filing.

The law, passed through Congress at lightning speed, which caught many inside TikTok off guard, is intended to force TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese company in nine months, with the possibility of a three-month extension if a possible sale is in play.

Yet, lawyers for TikTok say the law offers the company a false choice, since fully divesting from its parent company, ByteDance, is "simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally," the challenge states.

"And certainly not on the 270-day timeline required by the Act."

Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in technology regulations, said if TikTok loses this legal fight, it will likely shut down in the US.

"The problem for TikTok is that they have a parent company that has these obligations in China, but they're trying to live by free speech rules by the US," Chander said in an interview. "The question is whether American courts will believe that that's even possible."